Tom Robinson

Well, would you look at that, some more pictures! Gosh, we’ve seen a lot of things today, haven’t we? Maybe it’s about time you give your poor eyeballs a rest from the visual extravaganza that is ‘ART’ and have a skim of some utterly incompetent drivel I’ve put here to seem like a well-rounded human being.Well, maybe not so much well-rounded as squarish and elbow-like. After all, I’m only halfway decent at drawing goofy characters on blank backgrounds. Hopefully, the drawings themselves are interesting enough for you to forgive me for this meandering introductory paragraph.So, I like to draw, but I draw all day at my job! And while that is super great fun a lot of the time, it’s nice to draw something for yourself. That’s what you see here, it’s more the leftover creative ooze that didn’t get used up at work. As a result, I don’t know if there is too much purpose or deliberate thought behind any of this. But I have a lot of fun doing it! Half of the images here started as drawings in my sketchbook from one of the regular sketch groups that meet up at local bars in Wellington. It’s a great way to recharge your creative batteries: hanging out with other artists and not taking yourself or your art too seriously.Characters! Yip, I really like to draw characters. For me, picking any archetype and putting your own signature on it is plenty to have fun with. If you have that base to fall back on and know whoever is looking is going to have a vague association with what you’ve drawn, it strangely leaves you free to add some less familiar elements. Eventually, the character can start to speak for themselves and a whole new culture pops into your head, then there’s plenty to go off for the next character!Sometimes I like to think in terms of gangs. It’s a great premise for character design exploration. Naturally, you want to make each character unique, while keeping the group part of one identity. This is something I’ve started applying to my ‘tea wars’ characters. I’m really early on in the process but it’s a lot of fun to think about a world obsessed by tea, and I don’t even drink it!